In modern electronic systems, resource arbitration is often required to determine the order in which requesters will have access to shared resources. As the size increases in electronic systems, for example computer systems, or for a second example, communication systems including telephone systems, or for a further example, computer local area networks and wide area networks, the number of requesters becomes large and also the number of resources becomes large. The resources may be divided into distinct types with multiple instances of many of the types. Arbitration for the resources becomes more difficult as the number of requesters and the number of resources both become large.
Also, in computer communications the arbitration process must be fast because the connect time for transmission of a data packet may be only a few microseconds to a few milliseconds. And the arbitration must be fast enough to provide efficient switching for such short connect times.
The combination of fast arbitration for large numbers of requesters and resources puts a severe strain on arbiter design, and present arbiters are either too slow or do not scale well to large numbers of requesters and large numbers of resource types, each with multiple instances.
Examples of known arbitration systems follow.
As a first example of a known arbitration system, one type of resource arbitration is known as round-robin polling. In the round-robin polling scheme, all requesters for the shared resource are either logically or physically arranged into a ring. The arbiter polls the requesters in the order in which they are arranged in the ring. The arbiter grants access to the shared resource to the first requester in the ring which has an active request. When a requester has finished with the resource, the arbiter resumes polling at the next requester in the pre-established order. An example of a distributed round-robin polling scheme is a token-passing local area network such as IEEE standard 802.5.
As a second example of a known arbitration system, another type of resource arbitration is known as fixed-priority polling. This scheme is similar to round-robin arbitration except that when the shared resource becomes free, the polling of the requesters always restarts at a constant pre-designated point, i.e., the requester having the highest priority.
As a third example of a known arbitration system, this fixed priority polling is also done with "request snapshots" which attempt to prevent any particular requester from being unable to obtain access to a shared resource for an extended period of time. This can happen, for example, to low priority requesters in the fixed-priority polling scheme.
In the snapshot scheme, a "snapshot" of all outstanding requests is taken after all requests of a previous "snapshot" have been serviced. All of the requests in the "snapshot" are then serviced according to the designated polling discipline. Any new requests which occur during the time period after the "snapshot" is taken are inhibited or ignored until the next snapshot is taken. The request snapshot scheme guarantees that even the lowest-priority requester will be serviced so long as its request appears in a snapshot. Further, all requesters will each receive the shared resource no more than once per snapshot. An example of a distributed fixed-priority polling scheme with snapshots is the IEEE P1196 NuBus scheme.
As a fourth example of a known arbitration system, another arbitration scheme, called contention arbitration, permits one or more requesters to attempt to seize the shared resource at any time when the requesters perceive that the resource is available. A potential problem with this scheme, however, occurs when two or more requests collide with each other without anyone gaining access to the shared resource. Schemes have been developed to overcome this obstacle so that when a collision does occur, the requesters involved follow a designated policy for re-attempting their request. This policy can include waiting for a random time interval after the collision is over before regenerating the request. An example of contention arbitration is the IEEE 802.3 standard Ethernet Carrier-Sense-Multiple-Access/Collision-Detect scheme.
As a fifth example of a known arbitration system, a still further method of resource arbitration is known as queuing. In the queuing scheme, all requests are entered into a storage area called a queue. Requests are serviced from the queue according to a designated queuing discipline with the most common queuing discipline being a first-come, first-served policy. There are a variety of ways to implement a queue scheme, including the use of shift register memories, circular buffers, and linked lists.
Arbitration schemes are further classified as either centralized or distributed arbitration schemes. In a centralized scheme, requesters are separate from the arbiter and the arbiter is solely responsible for implementing the designated arbitration scheme. In distributed arbitration, however, the arbiter logic is distributed or divided throughout the system so that logic is closely associated with each requester and or each resource. Therefore, each requester is responsible for implementing a designated portion of the arbitration protocol. Both centralized and distributed arbitration schemes have advantages depending upon the specific application. The main differences are in the number and type of signal paths between requesters and the arbiter and in their fault tolerance characteristics.
All of these arbitration schemes, however, tend to be limited and are not acceptable either in rapid arbitration for computer communications or when used with a computer system having a large number of requesters and resources, or systems with multiple types of resources. For example, in prior arbitration schemes, when multiple resources having multiple instances were involved, multiple arbiters were frequently duplicated for each resource type, thereby increasing the cost and resulting in burdensome redundancy in the system.